Southie sweep speaks to hoops, faith’s bonding force

By JOE JASINSKI, Saint John’s Seminary

Four Southie bros hobble out of a gym…

Nope, that’s not the start of a joke. It’s actually the end of something special.

It was the scene of sore success, as Paul Ramsey, Vinny Ferrucci, Matthew Chignoli, and Ryan McCarthy slowly shuffled off the court and toward the third-floor doors inside Boston College’s Margot Connell Recreation Center on Saturday evening, having helped South Boston’s Saint Brigid (Warner and McCarthy) and Gate of Heaven (Ramsey and Chignoli) parishes secure gold and silver, respectively, at the third annual Saint John’s Seminary Basketball Invitational.

Truth be told, these were “guys I never knew” before joining Southie’s League Morning Star, said McCarthy, who last year joined the pre-dawn hoops league that now boasts 16 teams and a player pool of about 150 hoopers. “Now these guys are my friends. It’s incredible.”

Incredible in the very real sense that, “It’s hard to make friends the older you get,” joked McCarthy, a 2020 Bentley College grad (and Falcon wide receiver) who took in Saturday’s eight-hour ordeal alongside 17 buddies from Gatey and Saint Brigid, which earned a 68-64 overtime victory in the all-Southie final. And that in itself was incredible, given Saint Brigid trailed by significant margins in all five of its games, including a double-digit deficit in the semifinals against Hingham Catholic, which inched past Saint Thomas the Apostle (Millis, MA) in the third-place contest.

But thanks to Kyle Olander’s loose-ball dives, Colin Warner’s timely 3s, and stretches McCarthy could describe only as “Tuttle Time,” when teammate Alex Tuttle seemed to take over games, and Saint Brigid became the SJS Hoops Invite’s third different champion in as many years.

“I’ve always been looking to play basketball, and that’s what I found,” McCarthy said, “but I found so much more.”

Throughout Saturday, the sentiment was shared. “More” was found in Brother Anthony Marie’s Immaculate Heart of Mary (Still River, MA) squad, which brought dozens of rowdy fans with homemade signs to cheer on their Eagles and scoring sensation Alex McCormick who, along with his teammates, sported award-winning (“Best Uniforms”) titan yellow T-shirts specially designed by Sheila Rochman, the wife of IHM veteran Chris Rochman.

“More” was also found in the nick of time by Trivium, who claimed two last-second wins on clutch free throws by Ed Pastrone (a 1,000-point scorer while at Trivium) in the group-stage round.

“More” was certainly found in Hingham Catholic’s Conor Lowther’s vertical, which sent the Army private skyward to block a last-second 3 attempt by Saint Thomas long-range specialist Sean Parrish and secure the St. Paul/Resurrection collaborative’s first Invite trophy in the third-place game.

And “more” came for Eoin Walsh, too. After claiming the 3-point contest crown in his team’s first Invite appearance, the Catholic Weymouth captain’s favorite moment of the day arrived at the very end, as both championship squads and all remaining attendees gathered on the court to sing the “Alma Redemptoris Mater” and receive a final priestly blessing from Saint John’s vice rector Father Tom Macdonald.

“I’ve been playing basketball for a long time,” Walsh said, “but I’ve never had games that have ended in prayer. That was very special.”

It spoke to something deeper, too.

“​​I don’t think something like this happened anywhere else on earth,” Walsh said with a chuckle about Saturday’s proceedings, which started with Holy Mass in the Saint John’s Seminary Chapel, continued with a total of 21 hard-fought hardwood contests, and culminated with the Christmas season Marian hymn and closing blessing.

“Men, we thrive on teams, whether that’s in the parish, at work, or in sports; we want to have a purpose. So to pair something like basketball, that's just for fun, with your church … that’s a special, moving way to represent your community, even on a small scale.”

As they say, though, in harmony, small things grow — an adage seen manifest throughout the day: The simple scenes of Saint John’s coach Tom Biggins’s sons Tommy (13 years old), Ben (11), and Hopper (9) reverently praying in the chapel’s front-row pew before the Mass, then working the scorer’s tables (Tommy) and card tricks for referees (Ben); Saint Brendan’s Jason Potrzeba (who got his first ever Invite bucket earlier in the day) posted up in his customary perch on the top row to watch the championship with teammates Greg Scimeca, Jayden Amaral, and Jason’s son, Brandon who’d already designed the East Providence team’s jerseys for next year’s Invite; two expectant fathers in Saint Mary’s of the Assumption captain Charlie Boles and Weymouth’s Walsh being cheered on by their wives (and 2045 A.D. Invite captains-to-be); and a child letting one of Walsh’s teammates know postgame, “You were so good out there!”

Then there were the limping lads of South Boston.

McCarthy’s calf cramped so badly in the title game that he was restricted to cheering from the sideline by the end of the championship’s OT period. Nevertheless, he and seven or eight teammates still mustered the energy for a celebratory beverage upon returning to their Southie stomping grounds. And Sunday, teammate Kjellan Gallegos even brought the gold trophy to the 6 o’clock evening Mass at Saint Brigid’s to show the spoils to Father Peter Schirripa, who suited up in the squad’s group stage and semifinal bouts before jetting back to Gate of Heaven to celebrate Saturday evening’s Vigil Mass.

Then, some Sabbath sedentariness.

“I can barely walk,” McCarthy said with a laugh midday Sunday. “But that was awesome.”